Slitti – Super Novanta Amazzonia

Slitti â€“ Super Novanta Amazzonia

Questionable bar from Slitti, who usually delivers the goods at 90% but misses far and wide here. Just about everything that can go wrong does, and it seems all efforts to correct the many wrongs inherent in the cacao have incurred disastrous consequences.

Reviews

Alex Rast: 15-Nov-2007

SCORES

Score/10

Weight

Aroma:

10%

Look/snap:

5%

Taste:

35%

Melt:

5%

Length:

15%

Opinion:

30%

Total/100:

100%

INFO

Best before:

Batch num:

Source:

Supplied by:

As per usual Slitti’s bar looks very well-made but somehow a bit stern and forbidding, dark in colour and glossy, with a few mould unevennesses but little else. The aroma, though, is breathtaking: chocolatey mixed with raspberries and hazelnuts, a progression elegant and balanced, and raising expectations to the utmost. If the flavour is like this the chocolate should be the best in the world.

Incomprehensibly, though, the flavour is an utter betrayal of the aroma, with no roundness or depth, just a harsh, bitter woody tone rolling on into monotony, with coffee edges, perhaps a hint of cream, and all shouting to a common fault: overroasting. Slitti, it would seem, took a great bean and then turned it into near-charcoal, killing its potential over the flames. While perhaps not unpalatable, it’s ruined relative to what the aroma hints would have been possible and is a bar that leaves you profoundly depressed.

Slitti doesn’t usually slip up on texture and this one is again very good, albeit in a somewhat austere way, crisp and firm. Texture however is quickly forgotten in the long lament over the flavour: a chocolate that could have been so much more. Let us hope Slitti has more of this bean and has learned something in the roasting of this bar – if he takes a lighter touch on roasting this bar should turn into a supreme winner. But as it stands it merely highlights one way to make a costly mistake with good chocolate.

Hans-Peter Rot: 11-Nov-2007

SCORES

Score/10

Weight

Aroma:

10%

Look/snap:

5%

Taste:

35%

Melt:

5%

Length:

15%

Opinion:

30%

Total/100:

100%

INFO

Best before:

Batch num:

Source:

Supplied by:

SlittiĂ˘â‚¬â„˘s bars almost have an artificial or plastic-like appearance, perfectly molded with hardly any defects, deep saturated color, and a luminosity that resembles polished glass. And Amazzonia is no exception, shining vividly and darkly, cast in a rich ochre coat that is easy to see. The aroma, however, is of an entirely different breed, decidedly ashy and burnt, indicative of burning wood courtesy of careless over-roasting. Raspberries and coconut play a part, too, but with such a prominence on ash, the flavor can’t possibly promise good things.

Under this presumption, one is not disappointed. The flavor continuously offers ash and burnt wood for the entirety of the length, confirming major problems in the roast that were mysteriously overlooked. Bitter, too, there is virtually nothing to praise until an inkling of hopeĂ˘â‚¬â€ťblackberries, peaches, and hints of the fermentĂ˘â‚¬â€ťemerge but lose prominence due to their lack of intensity and short-lived presence.

One look at the texture may shed some light on the problem. It has a body thatĂ˘â‚¬â„˘s as substantial as water, and a length thatĂ˘â‚¬â„˘s averse to long-term commitment. This makes for a very creamy and smooth melt that in a lower-percentage bar would be ideal but not at this high level where thickness is desired. Given the success of SlittiĂ˘â‚¬â„˘s other 90% bars, one would assume that Amazzonia would be of equally high if not higher quality due to origin of the beans. Unfortunately, however, this simply is not the case, and one is left with a chocolate that not only falls short of expectations, but also fails to connect the taster with a true sense of what a 90% Venezuelan can deliver.